Body parts found in bags: Mom accused of murdering and dismembering son

Michigan police are investigating a gruesome discovery made on a highway just outside Detroit Thursday — human remains in garbage bags.

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A 59-year-old Michigan woman was being held Saturday by the St. Clair Shores police in connection with the murder and dismemberment of a 32-year-old white male people saw as bags of body parts tossed alongside a road Thursday. And, as was reported by the Associated Press (via Yahoo News) Feb. 1, according to the police, the woman is the mother of the dismembered man.

St. Clair Shores police Sgt. Jay Cohoe told the Times Herald of Port Huron that the two were mother and son but refused to release their names. The woman has yet to be charged.

The woman is from suburban Detroit. She is expected to be brought up on formal charges Monday when Macomb County prosecutors get the chance to view the warrant.

On Saturday, St. Clair Shores police issued a statement reading, in part: "Fingerprints taken from the dismembered white male were forwarded to the FBI and compared with previous fingerprints taken from the missing 32-year-old St. Clair Shores resident."

The man had been reported missing Jan. 26.

Thus far, a cause of death has not been released. However, an autopsy was scheduled for Friday.

Police responded to a calls when witnesses observed a middle-aged woman tossing garbage bags into the snow beside of Allington Road in St. Clair and China townships. Upon closer inspection, the garbage bags contained not trash, but human remains. Some of the body parts had slipped from the garbage bags and tumbled into the snow. St. Clair County police as well as Michigan State Police investigators were quickly on the scene and initiating a search for the woman, who was vaguely described as heavyset and driving a grayish-white GMC Jimmy or Chevrolet Trailblazer.

A separate bag was found Friday near Interstate 94 containing clothing and charred paperwork. Police said the bag was connected to the garbage bags full of body parts.

The Detroit Free Press reported Saturday that police obtained video footage from a surveillance camera at a gas station that showed both the woman and the vehicle law enforcement thought they were searching for. The woman had stopped in at the gas station on Thursday, the day the witnesses saw the woman depositing the garbage bags by the roadside. Releasing images to the public, police asked for help in finding the woman.

Police acknowledged that evidence also had been removed from two houses in St. Clair Shores.

Oddly enough, the mother's alleged dismembering of her son follows close on the heels of the sentencing of a 73-year-old Detroit man for dismembering a woman found in his bathtub. The Associated Press reported Jan. 29 that Alphonso Jackson had been sentenced to 10-to-20 years in prison in a plea deal. Pleading guilty to second-degree murder, concealing the death of an individual and tampering with evidence, Jackson avoided a sentence of life in prison.

The man had been arrested May 3 after police followed a trail of blood from the sidewalk to his house, subsequently discovering human remains in a bathtub. Jackson admitted to giving the woman money for drugs but panicked when she had died. He had then tried to hide the body. The woman's identity is still unknown.

On Monday morning, a number of students at El Dorado High School in Placentia, California discovered a teacher dead. Jillian Jacobson who taught photography, was found hanging from the ceiling inside a classroom in what seems to be a suicide.